


Feathers of Gold

by bluetoast



Series: Birds of a Feather [26]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Deaf Dean Winchester, Natural Disasters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 15:57:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1516448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluetoast/pseuds/bluetoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean wouldn't realize it until he was much older. He doesn't know that the natural disasters that seem to be occurring more and more often are actually the result of a war being waged in Hell. He doesn't even think about disasters that often either - he's more focused on gymnastics anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feathers of Gold

Dean Coulter wouldn't put the pieces together until many years later. Experts tried to tell the world that the things that were happening were 'normal' and that there was 'nothing to worry about.' As for himself, he wasn't so sure. What he was sure of was where it began. It began with something strange and terrifying.

The winter of 92 – 93 was exceptionally snowy for everyone in the country. Some schools had their years drug out until June for all the snow days. Dean remembered that it snowed on Halloween and it seemed to him that it snowed almost every other week after that. At Christmas, there was a foot and a half of snow on the ground and it ground the capitol to a halt. Dad said he was really glad it was the holidays and most of the politicians had already gone home. 

The wet trend continued into the spring – and with the thaw, came the flood. 

Dean watched on the news as the Mississippi/Missouri River valley began to vanish under deep water. Places he vaguely remembered from the backseat of the Impala. The massive ravine on Interstate 70 in the middle of Missouri. Sandbags on the levy outside Saint Louis. The Midwest disappeared under the rivers and still, it kept raining. 

When the water levels finally went down, leaving untold damage and destruction in their wake, it was called a one-hundred year flood. A flood that has a one in one hundred chance of happening every year. That seemed like horrible odds, in his mind – but some baseball teams had started the season with longer odds and won the Series in October. But time went on, and the flood faded into memory. 

He would later call it the warning. 

The warning of what was to come.

In the spring of 1994, two volcanoes, one in Iceland and another in Sumatra, both erupted within days of each other. No loss of human life, thankfully – but a month after they erupted, a volcano in Ethiopia and another in South America repeated the process. This time, there were human deaths to report. The world waited for another explosion that summer, but none came. It remained quiet – until winter.

On December first, a blizzard slammed into the Great Plains, from North Dakota all the way to Oklahoma, burying the middle of the country in snow ranging from four feet to six inches. Unspeakable cold crippled Canada, and St. John's Bay in Newfoundland froze. On the same day, a tropical storm, coming from the west, plowed over Central America, bringing mudslides and floods.

Some nut-jobs called it the end of the world and Dean might have believed them – had things not fallen silent before Thanksgiving. 

Things remained silent until a week before his birthday when an earthquake ripped through southern California. 

Then Dean fell into a whirlwind of gymnastic competitions and he stopped keeping track of everything. He'd hear things in passing – bad storms, tsunamis, landslides, forest fires – things that happened every year but somehow didn't require that much attention. Hurricane seasons came and went – and it was in the middle of the '98 Season he realized something sort of surprising; the hurricanes kept missing Maryland. He dismissed it on the fact that they were also missing Maine. 

*  
Dean sat back in his seat, shifting his focus to his book now that the flight attendants had finished the pre-flight safety demonstration. Dad had long ago taught him the drill, before he'd even gotten on a plane. The flight from Washington DC to Germany was going to be nine hours long, and he wasn't ready to just shut his eyes yet. He noticed that several other people were reading the same book he was – _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_ – everyone was saying this series was going to be 'the next big thing' like Star Wars or something. There was already talk of the books being turned into movies. Dean really didn't care – as long as they remembered to put closed captions on them, he didn't care.

He turned a page in the book and glanced at the person sitting next to him, who was hiding behind a newspaper. A small article caused him to start for a moment – Redwoods in Danger? - and he caught a few lines. It seemed several redwood trees in California had been found split straight down the middle, like they had been struck by lightning, though no storms had been reported in the area. Dean shrugged it off and went back to reading.

*

Gabriel leaned against the wall to catch his breath. Spread out around him and a dozen other angels were the corpses of hell hounds. He rubbed at his nose and shook his head. They had been down here, in Hell, for at least the equivalent of five years on Earth. It was hard to measure how many years it had been down here. He nudged a slain animal with his foot, feeling slightly sorry for the beast. It wasn't its fault what it had been born. This was had to be the one hundredth kennel he and the small squad of angels had cleaned out. 

“They were only hell hounds, Gabriel.” A voice caused him to look up. 

“Well, they couldn't help it, Castiel.” He took a cloth out of his pocket and cleaned the blood off of his sword. “I know they're hell-beasts, but at the same time...”

“I never will understand your motivation for trying to find the good inside the bad.” The younger angel shook his head. “What we are doing is good work.”

“Castiel, you do know that everything that happens down here ricochets on Earth.” He waved his hand to indicated the carnage. “True, something like this might manifest itself as a tornado that does nothing but tear up some farmland and kill a few cows, but other things, things like slaughtering the most recent legion of demons... that can be an earthquake or a category four hurricane.”

The other angel sighed and ran a hand through his hair, grimacing at the sticky feeling of blood in it. “Did you mean what you said? About taking me around to see what humans were like when this is all over?”

“Of course.” Gabriel watched as the other angels cleaned their swords, checked their armor and prepared to head on to the next place they were assigned to clear out. “Though I think Michael wants to move you up to the front lines and take part in some serious demon slaughter.”

“I am not afraid of demons, Gabriel. I'm not a little fledgling in need of protection.” The angel strode past him and joined the others.

Gabriel shook his head, feeling his heart clench. “But you're my little fledgling, Cas.” He adjusted his grip on his sword and prepared to lead the platoon away. He made a note to himself to tell Castiel of their relationship whenever this was all over. Provided Cas stayed with him, the angel would come to no harm. 

*  
Dean fell back on his bed in the hotel room, a massive grin on his face. “I can't believe we just did that!”

Fellow gymnast Nick Longstreet's face appeared above him. “You can't believe it? You can't hear the Russians cussing on the floor above us!”

There was a heavy thump, causing the lamp to shake and Dean sat up. “Felt that.” He couldn't stop grinning. “Nick... we just came in second in team World Championships.”

“I know that.” He made a face. “What are you saying?”

“If we can keep up this momentum, we might just get gold in Sydney.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You think the girls can do as well as we did tomorrow?”

“Oh hell yes.” Nick sat down on the other bed. “We should get something to eat.” He grabbed the room service menu. “No way are we going to come all the way to Germany and not have some real German grub.” He looked down at the list, frowning. “Uh this is...” He flipped it over. “There's the English version.”

Dean snickered at his teammate and sat cross-legged on the bed and started to untie his shoes. “I looked at that earlier. I'll take the jae-ger- schnitzel.” He set his shoes on the floor, followed by his socks.

“Soup or salad?” Nick asked, reaching for the phone. 

“Soup.” He replied, grimacing as he started to unwrap the ace bandage on his left ankle.

“Got it.” Out of the corner of his eye, Dean watched him order their dinner and he leaned over, rubbing the soreness out of his legs. He was really glad individual worlds weren't for a few more weeks. His ankle was going to need a little down time before then. He let out a breath and fell back onto the bed, the adrenaline rush finally wearing off. He saw a flicker when Nick turned the TV on and he sat back up, stretching. 

“Can I see the remote?” 

“Sure.” Nick handed him the device and started to take his own shoes off. “Guy at the desk said it'd be about half an hour. You mind if I get the first shower?”

“Go for it. Probably better if you answered the door anyway.” Dean chuckled and hit a few buttons, getting the closed captions to appear on the only English-speaking channel on the TV, the BBC. He frowned at the picture on the screen. “Looks like it was another stormy day back in the states.” He wasn't sure what Nick said next, only that he saw him get up and move to get clothes out of his bag. The picture changed again the reporter started talking about the prime minster, Tony Blair. He let out a sigh and went to get a few things from his own bag so he'd be ready to go into the bath when Nick was done. He couldn't really blame the BBC for changing the story – a tornado outbreak in the Midwest States was probably dismissed as 'typical' to them. 

Dean just hoped all those affected were all right. 

He sat back down on the bed and picked up his silver medal, running his thumb over the engraved surface, all thoughts of natural disasters slipping from his mind.


End file.
